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How entertaining? ★★☆☆☆
Thought provoking? ★★☆☆☆ 11 August 2013
This article is a review of ELYSIUM.
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“They will hunt you to the edge of the Earth for this,” Spider (Wagner Moura)
The tang of disappointment pervades, one is gutted to report. Seemingly having triple the budget, but instead of triple the brains or triple the excitement, ELYSIUM is a deeply unsatisfying follow-up to director Neill Blomkamp’s wow-inducing DISTRICT 9 from 2009. That debut was an excellent sci-fi parable, on the surface chronicling interplanetary visitors living among us, though was an eviscerating look at apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa; encapsulated in a pulse-thumping action thriller. Forget the clunky AVATAR, it is DISTRICT 9 and LOOPER at the vanguard of glorious modern science fiction cinema. So having more resources, one was salivating at the prospect of what Blomkamp might offer up. ELYSIUM unfortunately is a movie saturated in convenience and corner cutting.
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“You used to be a legend,” Julio (Diego Luna) to Max (Matt Damon)
We are told late 21st century Earth was diseased, polluted and over-populated. The wealthiest fled to preserve their way of life. They live on a giant city orbiting the planet. Young Max grows up in an orphanage. Constantly dreaming of going to this Elysium, which can be seen in the sky taunting the denizens of a broken planet. The audience gets clunky sporadic flashbacks to his childhood. They are lazy character beats. Rather than let words and actions speak for him, we get cloying glimpses of his youth. A nun tells him, “I know you are special.” Oh dear, are we in prophecy and destiny territory? Contrast DISTRICT 9’s Wikus Van De Merwe – we don’t need to know anything but what is in front of us, and he is a mesmerising, flawed creation evolving fluidly. An actor of Matt Damon’s calibre can inject his usual charisma, intelligence and humanity, though there is not nearly enough meat for him to chew on here.
Los Angeles, 2154, Max as an adult is on parole; working for a large corporation manufacturing artificially intelligent humanoid drones that police Earth and protect Elysium. Any kind of worker rights are non-existent, including basic safety regulations. Once a talented car thief, Max is now saving up to buy his way legitimately into paradise. Time runs out. It suddenly becomes necessary for Max’s survival to break into the heavily guarded satellite.
On Elysium, a citizen lays down on a flatbed and is scanned – traces of cancer are removed magically; while down below basic healthcare is a struggle. Desperation is the watchword. Spider is an underground fixer, and facilitates attempts to break Earthlings through the space city’s perimeter. Heartless Defence Secretary Delacourt (Jodie Foster) has no qualms in overriding protocols and shooting down a spaceship containing 40-odd people. And this is the massive problem with ELYSIUM: The allegory is so unsubtle. The audience is bludgeoned with ideas of injustice – police state, inadequate medicine, treatment of the Third World (which is effectively what the entire planet is), immigration, unfair distribution of wealth, etc. These are all important topics, and bravo for a blockbuster even bothering to tackle them, however compare DISTRICT 9, which wove dextrously its political commentary into a compelling character driven story. ELYSIUM doesn’t regard us with the same respect. The technology is all over the place, enough to continually question its logic. The lack of seamless integration of ideas, tech, character and story is frustrating.
Don’t get me started on the ending.
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